Metadata: History of the State Museum of Ethnography
Collection
- Country:
- Russia
- Holding institution:
- Russian Museum of Ethnography
- Holding institution (official language):
- Российский этнографический музей
- Postal address:
- 191186, Россия, Санкт-Петербург, Инженерная ул., 4/1
- Phone number:
- (812) 313-45-74
- Web address:
- http://www.ethnomuseum.ru/
- Email:
- info@ethnomuseum.ru
- Reference number:
- Collection IM-3
- Title:
- History of the State Museum of Ethnography
- Title (official language):
- История Государственного музея этнографии
- Creator/accumulator:
- State Museum of Ethnography
- Date(s):
- 1934/1999
- Language:
- Russian
- Extent:
- 134 storage units [There are also unnumbered photographs distributed among folders marked “Unnumbered Photographs”]
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Photographic images
- Scope and content:
- The collection includes photographs of various exhibits of the State Museum of Ethnography/Russian Museum of Ethnography, and of individual exhibit items, stands, display cases, etc.; photographs taken during ethnographic expeditions organised by the museum; and portraits of museum staff members. The fonds is provisionally divided into two parts: exhibits of the prewar period (to 1941 inclusive), and of the postwar period (after 1945). Materials pertaining to the history of Jews in Russia include photographic prints and glass negatives pertaining to the “Jews in Tsarist Russia and in the USSR” exhibit that was in operation at the State Museum of Ethnography from 1939-41. Photographic prints are stored in the folder titled “Evenks, Turkmens, Jews. Northern Caucasus. History of the USSR, the Population of the Black Sea Regions.” Photographs by A. A. Grechkin show the overall appearance of the exhibit hall and the staged scenes (dioramas): “Purimspiel,” “Old (pre-revolutionary) Jewish town,” and “Georgian Jews”; models titled “Taiga development in the Jewish Autonomous Region,” based on ethnographic records from the expedition of the Jewish section of the State Museum of Ethnography to Birobidzhan in 1937; and “A scene from the production of Bar-Kokhba” at the Moscow State Yiddish Theater (GOSET); panels (two-dimensional materials: photographs, diagrams, quotations, and documents) and models, etc. on “Klezmer folk musicians,” “Metal handicrafts,” “Anti-Jewish pogroms, 1881-1905,” “The road to October,” “The rebirth of the Jewish people in the Land of Soviets,” “The social composition of the Jewish population in tsarist Russia and in the USSR,” “The history of the Jewish Autonomous Region,” “Natural resources of the Jewish Autonomous Region,” “The first settlers in the struggle with the taiga,” “The young city of Birobidzhan,” “Industrial Birobidzhan is growing,” “Born in the taiga,” “The Jewish Autonomous Region in art,” “Jewish collective farms,” “Prosperous kolkhoz life,” “Fascism means hunger and war,” etc. (1939).
- Archival history:
- The photo and negative fonds of the State Museum of Ethnography was first formed in the 1890s, virtually from the moment the Russian Museum was established. At present the fonds of the Russian Museum of Ethnography’s photo archive (the photo collection) includes approximately 180,000 storage units. It consists of photographs taken by museum staff during expeditions, as well as photographs acquired from private individuals and various organisations. The main criterion for the formation of particular collections is that the photographs in question belong to a particular collection creator. This is why photos in a given collection may be devoted to different subjects and reflect different ethnic cultures, and may have been taken at different times. In cases in which photos were acquired from collection creators secondarily, a new collection is formed with corresponding numbering. At the same time, in cases in which a large quantity of photographs that can be grouped by ethnic provenance was received from a collection creator at once, standalone collections are organised. Within collections, photographs have consecutive numbering, the sequence of which relates to ethnicity and subject (if the photographs feature several ethnic groups, then for each of these, photos are grouped by subject), or subject only (if the collection’s materials pertain to only one ethnic group). A given photo collection’s sequence number depends on the overall number of exhibit items (and of collections thereof) received by the museum, including material items, as the Russian Museum of Ethnography considers photographs to have the same status as any other ethnographic item.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- This is a collection of photo-documents reflecting the exhibit activities of the State Museum of Ethnography/Russian Museum of Ethnography from when it was first opened to the late 1990s.
- Access points: locations:
- Birobidzhan
- Black Sea
- Caucasus
- Jewish Autonomous Region
- Russia
- Taiga
- USSR
- Access points: persons/families:
- Grechkin, A. A.
- System of arrangement:
- The collection’s inventory is in the process of being organised; there is a log of auxiliary-reference material; all photos are in sequentially numbered folders in chronological order.
- Finding aids:
- The collection’s inventory is in the process of being organised.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary
